take a walk down memory lane

Take a walk down memory lane to July 5th, 6th, and 7th of this year.  Our family went on a family Pioneer trek with some other members of our church.   Overall, it was a good experience for our family.  We met new friends and enjoyed really really good food and realized that wearing multiple layers of clothing and walking in the sun makes for one noncompliant and irrational Sam.  At one point he just sat down on the trail.  Mr. Jewels carried him most of the way, the other times, he was riding in the wagon. Good thing we had prepared ourselves mentally by betting that Sam would walk on his own maybe 1 mile out of the 6 or 7 that we walked.  Jon and Eme seemed to really enjoy it, we were paired up with a family that have kids their same age and who wanted to pull and push the handcart most of the way.  There was a women's pull in which I thought I just might die, but survived with the help of 9 women we made it up the steep sandy hill.  We had to wear our pioneer dress the first two days we were there, but on the day we were going home we could wear normal clothes.  It was really funny because it was hard to recognize people without their pioneer bonnets and dresses on.  We all looked like complete strangers on the day we left.  Before we headed home we drove up to Independence Rock.  This is where a lot of the pioneers came and carved their names into the rock at the top, you can see a lot of them still today, it is amazing.  This rock is about the halfway point on the trail and a group had reached this rock on July 4th, hence the name "independence".    Would we do a family pioneer trek again? Maybe.  But for now I am just grateful for these memories.

And today I celebrate my thirty-fourth birthday.  If the weather stays nice we will be heading up to Pineview Reservoir to have dinner and play in the water.